Thursday, 28 August 2014

Modern-Day Pandoras Box

Yesterday, there was an odd announcement by the Department of Transportation.....suggesting potential regulations coming up shortly, and forcing cars manufactured in the US....to have a broadcast capability.

Yeah....this means your car would broadcast out your speed, direction, and location. Acting with a GPS satellite.....it'd tell a network where you were....ID your car by some method (maybe the tag number or the serial number of the car).....and note your progress.

Speeding? Well....it wouldn't take an idiot to filter out the location and figure that you were in a 45-mph zone and doing 51-mph. Ticket from a network viewer? Very likely.

Why they need to move in this direction? They weren't exactly talking about in the announcement. I suspect they have the capability and simply believe it's the best direction in the future to go. Kinda like me knowing what's best for my neighbors, my peers, and my buddies.

What the article didn't really discuss.....was how the government would receive the data....from across 3.79 million square miles.

First, you'd have to consider the transmission capability onboard a car. Unless you were sending signals back to a satellite....it'd be practically impossible to cover more than fifty-percent of the US. Vast areas of Alaska, Montana, California and Idaho simply wouldn't be covered. Maybe ninety-five percent of Maryland and Delaware might be possible. Maybe sixty-percent of Alabama might be put under some collection device.

Second....all of this would have to go into some giant data collection system. Just getting a contract generated to cover this requirement.....you can figure a twenty-billion-dollar contract to set up the initial stage, with receivers on all interstates and US highways. State highways and county roads? Maybe down the road with stage two.

Third...how would they control the privacy of the data? All it'd take is one idiot kid from Wales breaking into their database, and suddenly a hundred-thousand cars could disappear from the display in a matter of seconds.

A Pandoras Box? Yeah. Happening shortly? I can see this delayed for a year or two, but by 2020....it's likely going to be implemented.....with thousands of Americans figuring ways to disable their car's beacon, and facing some kind of fine by the state cops for violating federal law. Pretty sad way of society evolving.

Letters From Ripley

Inspired by Letters from Seneca (124-essay effort) that brought Stoicism out of the shadows.

Stoicism is the concept of accepting pains, woes, sorrows, troubles, luck, gains, losses, and life as being "part of nature". Whatever happened yesterday...simply happened....I can learn from it, gain from it, and then just accept it. No matter what the score was....there is tomorrow and I simply need to put my best foot forward.

Me?

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood,
leads onto fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in
shallows, and in miseries. So I intend to ride out this flood upon my
virtual porch in Ripley and see where this "flood of life" takes
me...whilst sipping ice cold tea with a chunk of lemon...pondering the
comings and goings of life.